A daily chronicle of creativity in film, TV, music, arts, and entertainment, produced by Southern California Public Radio and broadcast from November 2014 – March 2020. Host John Horn leads the conversation, accompanied by the nation's most plugged-in cultural journalists.
At the Palos Verdes Art Center this month, you may find some people sitting around a living room set in the main gallery containing a TV, sofa and lamp. It's all painted completely white — even part of the floor — as if someone tried to white out their home furnishings. The people are yarn bombing and they’ve come to knit the living room.
Yarn bombing is your grandma’s street art. It’s all about surprising, colorful displays of knitted objects in public spaces. It means knitting around trees, bikes, statues and, yes, living rooms. Now the Palos Verdes Art Center is honoring the craft with an interactive installation titled "Fiber Madness."
One of the featured artists in the exhibit is Karelle Levy, who is at once a performance artist, textile artist and fashion designer. While most of the exhibit-goers are checking out the whited-out living room objects, Levy is yarn bombing the exhibit-goers.
She knits a piece of art — her Krel2go couture knitwear — onto their bodies in under 20 minutes while everyone else is watching. Her roster of collaborators on this evening range from baby boomer women to children to, yes, yours truly. Once I tell Levy what I want (a brand new dress!) she’s off to work, draping fabrics over my torso while I ask her about what led to her "quickie couture."
Levy grew up in Miami with her mom who kept a loom in the basement. Her mother was born in Sweden, where knitting was second nature, but before she could teach pass on her textile techniques, she died when her daughter was just 16. So the young Levy took it upon herself to learn. She enrolled in a night class at the University of Miami and then studied textile art at the Rhode Island School of Design. Now, fashion icons such as Rihanna, Nicki Minaj and Patricia Fields ask her to dress them, and she’s busy booking galleries for her performance art.
One of Levy's signature design aesthetics is the unfinished look of her pieces. On my dress, for example, the caplet sleeves fray at the bottom, which is exactly how Levy likes it — she prefers to see the flaws. After experiencing her mother’s death at a young age, Levy knows that life is messy. We’re all unfinished pieces of art in our own right. And that’s exactly how I felt wearing the dress — it’s colorful, fun and, even though it’s flawed, it’s perfect for me.
"Fiber Madness" is on view at the Palos Verdes Art Center through November 16th.